Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by Fox B. Holden

  There weren’t. Joel’s three officers turned and left, each scrambling to his new assignment, glad to actually get started before something happened to upset the unexpected simplicity of the whole thing. There’d never been a mission that had come off as smoothly as this one was beginning. It promised to make them feel guilty to draw their pay checks for it. For once, it looked as though Joel was going to get what he came after without having to fight down to raw nerve and bone to get it. Good. The Captain had an easy one coming.

  When they’d gone, Joel dropped his great frame into the ancient chair behind his big desk and got to work with the ship’s intercom, flipping it to main circuit. He did ten minutes’ talking in six, and Phase One was organized, down to the last ship’s guard, down to the last assistant servomech.

  Then he had fourteen minutes until Carruthers was due, ready to drive him to meet these people in their cultivated forest.

  So for every one of the fourteen minutes, Captain Nicholas Joel leaned back in the chair, shut his eyes tight, and filled in a little more of the world he wanted.

  THE ROADS were of hard-packed dirt, but level, and wide. Occasionally, as Sam Carruthers drove, they would pass through a hamlet, or go by small knots of men and women in carriages and wagons drawn by striped animals resembling Earth’s African zebra. The farms were small but numerous, and none, Joel noted, had been entirely cleared; the trees had been thinned, and they were of a far more slender variety than grew elsewhere, but they had not been eliminated. It set well with him. Joel had always liked trees, and he had a feeling he was going to like other people who did to such an obvious extent.

  Buildings, he noted, were almost entirely of wood; structures very similar to those he remembered having seen in a history text dealing with the western United States in the nineteenth century. A few were of stone, some of small, brick cubes; all were pleasing enough to the eye. And the people themselves were—

  The people looked up as the jeep roared past; looked up from their work in the fields, looked out from their wagons and carriages, looked from their saddled mounts at the roadside. But there was no fear in their glances, only the quick puzzlement of inquiring intelligence.

  They were straight, well-bodied people, clothed simply in colorful garments which Joel assumed were made of cloth; the men were tall and broad and he could mentally picture the powerful muscles that rippled beneath their shirts. And the women—The women were the most graceful creatures he had ever seen, even those who were obviously no longer young; they were less fully clad than their men, and Captain Nicholas Joel liked that.

  He liked it because it was honest. Where there was something beautiful, why in the name of anything holy or otherwise should it be covered up? That was the trouble with Earth and her people. There were too few things of real beauty, and when they did exist, humans seemed to have a psychotic compulsion for either ignoring them or hiding them completely. And those who did hesitate for a stolen moment’s admiration were hurriedly hollered back to their jobs.

  “You’re surprised that they’re not cluttering up the roads, trying to get a closer look at us?” Sam was hollering over the howl of the warm, oxygen-rich atmosphere.

  “Good discipline,” Joel grunted, still occupied with his own thoughts.

  “Well, you’re partly right. But more than that, we haven’t stopped to look at them! It’s sort of a halfcourtesy, half-pride they have. They won’t slow a stranger down if he doesn’t slow them down, figuring that if he wanted to, he would; the prerogative is his. And, if he’s not that interested, then neither are they!”

  “You’re sure some expedition didn’t get here before we did?” Joel asked. “I mean—hell, they could be from Earth—”

  “Ever hear of an Earthman with two hearts, skipper? But physically that’s about the only difference I could find. Psychologically—” The Space surgeon hesitated. “Psychologically what?”

  “Take too long to explain—we’re coming into the capital city you were talking about. And besides—” he grinned in a sidelong glance at Joel, “you might even have the brains to figure it out all by yourself.”

  “Go to hell!”

  In a moment Carruthers was busy with the jeep, tooling it through narrowing streets, slowing it to almost a walk as men and women hastened out of their way, crowded the board sidewalks to allow them to pass unhampered. The buildings were much like those he had seen in the rural districts; a little larger, a bit taller, but none more than fifty feet in height. Neatly painted, their thin glass windows bright and clean, they did not look like part of a city at all, Joel reflected, much less part of a capital city. And everything was so quiet.

  Maybe too quiet. He felt a little chill at the base of his spine, but kept looking straight ahead.

  “You’re sure, Sam, about leaving my guns back at the ship?”

  Carruthers just grinned again. And then they turned abruptly, and hauled up in front of a long, low building of flagstone.

  “This is it,” the surgeon said. “No reporters, no photographers, no autograph seekers, no brass band or politicians. But you’re on, Skipper.”

  CAPTAIN Nicholas Joel felt naked without his guns, and he felt off-balance and out of place. Standing in the sedate, oval-shaped council-chamber with these peaceful-looking people confronting him, he felt clumsy in his heavy black leatheroid uniform, big, highly-polished black boots. He felt as if he looked like what he’d been forced to be on other occasions, facing forms of life so alien that no difference counted—like a man-at-arms, like a conqueror.

  Suddenly, he was glad Sam had made him leave his guns back at the ship.

  “Nicholas Joel, United Americas Intergalactic Exploration Fleet, of the Ship White Whale, commanding!” Carruthers was introducing him in English, and he wished that Sam would have had the good sense to have said “This is Captain Joel” and let it go at that. Didn’t the grinning idiot know it must have been an awful pill for these people to swallow all at once? That there were, to begin with, such things as other planets and other galaxies—and that there were, even more incredibly, other creatures that lived on them. And, whether they cared to believe it or not, some of these creatures had just landed among them, and there was nothing they could do about it!

  Sam was picking his way along now in their speech, and then at an obvious gesture, Joel knew he was being introduced to their top man. Sam waved an arm toward the tallest of the twelve-man group, who arose from the opposite side of a polished wooden table, and bowed gently from the waist.

  “His Excellency and Prime Governor, K’hall-ik’hall.”

  Joel hesitated, then returned the bow. He had never bowed in his life, but a salute to somebody dressed in civilian clothes seemed crazy.

  “Sam, you mean he’s Prime Governor of—”

  “The whole planet.”

  “Am I always supposed to say his name twice?”

  “That is his name. That’s the way they do it. Now shut up, Skipper, and let me do the talking. I’m going to go through the whole works again with ’em. Then we sign. Then you get a tour of the town so the people can be introduced to you officially. But don’t go making any speeches! Behave, and we’re in business.”

  “You go to—”

  But Sam had already started talking in the liquid-sounding language, and Joel decided it was better for him to keep his own mouth shut and be thought stupid than open it and remove all doubt. Damn it, the whole thing was making him feel just the way he had twenty years ago, when he landed his first explorer on an alien world! It had been that long, and how many hundred meetings with alien life-forms since then, under how many fantastic circumstances, on how many God-forsaken, unworldly places? By now he was supposed to know the score. By now he was supposed to have seen everything. By now he knew the book inside and out, and had the ability to take charge no matter where in the black universe they sent him. Nicholas Joel, United Americas Intergalactic Exploration Fleet, of the Ship White Whale, commanding . . .

  But nobody
was challenging his right to have what he’d come for!

  No trouble, that was the hell of it, and—and there was nothing to hate.

  For a miserable moment, Captain Nicholas Joel stood becalmed, with not so much as a breeze in his sagging sails.

  But he would not let them know it. He looked levelly into the eyes of each of the twelve, but even that did little to make him feel more at ease.

  For he saw wisdom in the lined, kindly faces. He saw a humility and sincerity that matched the simple clothing they wore. He saw a kindness that men talked about in books and sometimes felt in their hearts, but seldom held openly in their faces for the world to see. These men were handsome in their physical stature, but they could have been little men three feet high, and they would have been the biggest that Joel had ever seen.

  Now they were talking in subdued tones to Sam, and then one produced a document, and handed Sam a slender writing stylus.

  “Hey Sam—” The hoarseness of his voice unnerved him, but Joel plowed ahead. “Hadn’t you oughtta read that thing?”

  “It’s already been read, Skipper. By Dobermann. It took him three days to draw it up—he did most of the writing himself. It’s already been electrostated; we’ve got ten copies of our own. Now keep your mouth shut or they’ll think we don’t trust them. You sign first, because you’re the guest. Then K’hall-i-k’hall, and it’s all over.”

  Sam’s thin face had a seriousness in it that Joel knew he did not dare question. The trouble is, the thought stung him, you doubt, because you were born and raised on Earth. Sam knows that. And he knows how these people think. And he says sign . . . So sign, you big boob.

  Silently, Joel took the stylus from Sam, bent quickly over the papyrus-like document, and put his name, rank and ship where Sam pointed. Then he gave the stylus to Sam, who returned it to K’hall-i-k’hall. And in another instant, all the mneurium-4 the White Whale could lift clear was theirs for the taking.

  ONCE HE’D put his mind to it, Joel could converse in the language of his hosts as fluently as either Dobermann or Carruthers, and within a month he had been able to finish a limited round of visits to a full dozen of the smaller cities and towns. These people had respected his wish that he be allowed to roam their streets and public buildings without official escort, and with an ever-quickening fading of his self-consciousness, he did.

  He did, more and more frequently.

  And from the vantage point of their peacefully winding roads or their quaint little shops where they dispensed a fluid amazingly similar to Martian Colony Bond, Joel could hate the White Whale from a comfortable distance, and with a healthy, untiring diligence. This he also did, more and more frequently.

  It was during one of these self-assigned off-duty periods, alone in his personal jeep, that his most recent pint of Bond decided to harass him, and he discovered almost too late that he had ignored a turn of the dirt roadway. He skidded wickedly, and frightened one of the zebra-like animals drawing a vehicle much resembling a four-wheeled surrey. The animal let go with a terrified whinny, and with a sickening splintering noise, the dhennah went plunging off the road into the deep drainage ditch at its edge. There was also another sound, and Joel practically stood the jeep on its nose slewing it to a stop.

  By the time he was out and running back, the frightened animal had gotten itself out of the ditch and was working frantically to bring the dhennah out after it. But the vehicle was canted at a crazy angle, and it was obvious to Joel that at least one of its starboard wheels was broken, and that it would take more than one kaelli to haul it out.

  None of this, he reflected as he ran, was going to help diplomatic relations a bit. And he was no Dobermann. But it was none of these things that worried him at the moment.

  She was screaming bloody murder, and still was hard at it when he jumped into the ditch.

  She stopped when he clambered up on the steeply tilted narrow seat to which she clung. There was suddenly not a sound from her as his big hands circled her waist and gently lifted her to the ground.

  Then he discovered that his voice was stuck. Dammit, an explorer captain for over fifteen years, and he didn’t know what to say when he banged up some farm girl’s dhennah!

  “I—ah, am terribly sorry. It will be replaced, of course. Very stupid and clumsy of me. I—ah, you hurt?” Rather smooth, at that!

  She smiled. Slender lips, golden-colored eyes, delicately contoured face—all seemed to smile together. A breeze ruffled her tawny mass of shoulder-length hair, and Nicholas Joel just stood there.

  “You are forgiven, the dhennah was not a costly one. I know how difficult it must be for you to guide those machines of yours at such terrible speeds . . . but of course the speeds are necessary to you in your work. Thank you for helping me.”

  Joel reassured himself that if only the conversation were in his mother tongue, he would of course not feel so ridiculously at a loss for words. After all, this young female was only an—an alien being.

  “It was my pleasure, of course,” Joel said. He thought perhaps if he could manage a smile—“I am gratified that you accept my clumsiness with such excellent grace. As intruders to begin with, my men and I—”

  “Intruders, sir?” She had taken a few steps away from him to stroke the neck of the kaelli and quiet it, but she was still looking at him. “Why intruders? At one time, all the people of this world were not of one great community as they are now, surely you know that. But when one group travelled and visited another, no one thought of it as an intrusion.” She laughed. “Are we all not one under the sun?”

  “But they were of your own kind, from elsewhere on your own planet—”

  “A visitor is a visitor,” she said, as though suddenly puzzled. “What can it matter where he is from?” Joel started to reply, but checked himself. Of course these people had no way of knowing. Of course they were still under the impression that intelligent life, wherever it might exist, would necessarily be in their own form. The fact that it might not be had never occurred to them! Then that was why they had not feared the White Whale and her crew. It was something Carruthers had probably perceived at once, something he could no doubt explain. But now Joel was seeing it first-hand for himself. Psychologically, this girl and her people were incapable of conceiving a way of life based on different reasons for living than their own, with different motives, different—ambitions.

  Just, he reflected, as his own people were psychologically incapable of greeting a stranger without subconscious suspicion.

  To these people, a visitor was—a visitor, and therefore a friend!

  He wondered how many others beside himself, Carruthers and Dobermann knew.

  “Perhaps it does not matter at all,” Joel said, and he was surprised at the gentleness in his voice. He had not felt it that way in his throat for a long time. Not for a terribly long time. “Now, if you’ll let me help you with that harness, we’ll free your kaelli, and see what can be done about getting you on toward your destination!”

  Joel’s big fingers started fumbling with the thick leather thongs of the kaellis rig. The harness felt strange and confusing to hands disciplined to the limiting exactnesses of servocircuits and pressure-control studs, and the complexity of their co-ordination was thrown into confusion by sheer simplicity.

  The girl laughed as she watched his efforts, then guided his hands with her own, and Joel felt a strange warmth mounting in his neck. And when the kaelli was at last freed, he said, “Now then, where can I take you? I owe you something more than just the replacement of your dhennah. I shall drive slowly so that the kaelli can follow, and you can see for yourself what it is like to ride in one of our machines!”

  “But—they go like the wind!”

  “Indeed they do!” Joel laughed, unaccountably pleased with her excitement. “Yes, ma’m, just like the wind!”

  Quite unexpectedly, she reached for his hand, and Joel clasped hers with a quickness he had not intended. But then he was leading her to the jeep, help
ing her into it.

  He started the powerful turbine engine, chuckled aloud at her quick gasp, then joined in her laughter.

  “Just like the wind!” he cried and they were off.

  The day was clear and bright and to Joel the air itself seemed to come alive with a heady excitement. This was something, it told him. This was not to hate. This was not to drink in bitterness. This was not to be alone.

  CAPTAIN Nicholas Joel paced the fore-waist bridge. There was a full, untouched flagon on the mahogany desk, and the bottle of Martian Colony Bond stood, tightly corked, beside it.

  He sat down, hating the feel of the chair of command beneath his big body.

  What he was thinking was wrong, of course. But no man could be two men; a man could not split himself down the middle and say: this is your life here, this is your life there, for it is unthinkable that a man be prisoner of one life only—No, a man could not do that; a man had only one life.

  Wrong, was it?

  And who, any more a man than himself, could dare to be judge?

  He would call Carruthers; he would explain, and Carruthers would inform the rest. As for Command—

  A buzzer roared on the desk in front of him. It was the dispatch unit communicator—it would be Southard.

  A huge forefinger hit the toggle almost hard enough to wrench it from its socket.

  “Command!” Joel grated into the sensitive pick-up. “Proceed with your message.” He reached for the flagon, drained it, filled it again.

  “Lieutenant Southard calls Command from Servogroup 4.” The youngster’s voice sounded tight, excited. Now what the hell—“Request task mission. Request task mission. Position—”

  Joel quickly jacked in the ship’s armory circuit. An alarm klaxon would be electrifying the entire complement of combat personnel stationed in that quarter of the ship even as armory communications was taking down the co-ordinates Southard was dictating. And within one minute and forty-five seconds after that, combat units would be assembling in machine-like precision, deploying into advance order at the ship’s stern.